The Fifth Envelope
by Zephyrim
Summary: America, 1969, the Doctor  age 909  is investigating the Silence hours before Canton finds him. However, after a severe injury the Doctor meets two very old friends of his...who just happened to have won the lottery.
1. Chapter 1

The Fifth Envelope

"Ian, is the mail in yet?" Barbara called from the other room.

"Mail?"

"Post, Darling, here in America, it's called Mail," explained Barbara.

"Ah."

It was America, 1969 and Ian and Barbara Chesterton were vacationing in Florida, ready to watch two men step out onto the moon in a few months time. Why so early? Well, it's not everyday someone wins a lottery for a year trip to America and two million pounds that they don't remember entering.

"Barbara," Ian came into the kitchen on the flat (apartment! Americans were funny) they were renting for the space launch.

"What is it?" she looked up from the magazine she was reading. Ian was holding a blue envelope. It was covered in stamps and had their address written on it in white lettering.

"What an interesting shade of blue," Barbara took the letter and opened it. Inside was a date, a time a place and the number five. Beneath that were only six words: help him, no hospitals or aspirin.

"What does it mean?" Barbara looked from the card to the envelope…the TARDIS blue envelope.

"It does seem his style, doesn't it? Difficult, not wanting to explain himself or show up in person; it seems kind of…grumpy, doesn't it?" Ian read the card.

"That's three blocks from here," he realized.

"This whole circumstance seems impossible, doesn't it? A lottery we didn't enter, ending up in America for a year with a lot of spending money to make irresistible, the promise of seeing an event where humans land on an astral body that isn't their own when we've already done that…it can't be anyone else," Barbara looked at the date. "That's in three hours."

"After all this time, the Doctor decides he needs our help? Even for him, that's odd," remarked Ian.

"Do you think he'd complain if we were there early?" Barbara stood up and grabbed her hat and sunglasses.

"Oh, he'd complain…but I don't think he'd mind," Ian grabbed his keys and they walked arm and arm out of the flat.

* * *

><p>The Doctor looked at the readings on his sonic screw driver. He had split off from Amy, Rory and Canton two weeks ago and had begun tracking the Silence which was difficult considering he couldn't remember encountering them after he had encountered them.<p>

_Just keep calm, Doctor…_

He checked his hands. No marks, thankfully.

By now, Canton had to be actively searching for them as per the plan of fooling the Silence into believing they could capture the Doctor. The Doctor wondered if Amy and the rest had been caught yet. A black van drove slowly around the corner, the Doctor ducked around a corner and waited for it to go by.

_That was fast…_

The Doctor put his screwdriver back in his pocket and peeked. This street was empty now for the moment. As the Doctor ventured out onto the road, something hit him—something big, something he hadn't noticed. The Doctor hit pavement and rolled over onto his back.

_I can't die just yet…_

The Doctor got up and stumbled back to the sidewalk. He felt himself falling and suddenly a strong arm steadied him. The Doctor looked up and saw a very familiar face looking down at him, full of worry.

_It can't be…_

Everything faded to black as the Doctor looked at the face of Ian Chesterton.

* * *

><p>Ian threw the man over his shoulder and started walking. Barbara's face was a mask of shock and she hurriedly looked at the note again.<p>

"No hospitals," she read.

"I know, let's hope we can get him back home without anyone asking questions," Ian started walking. The street was still empty; everyone was hard at work cleaning their houses and shops, waiting for the big day only weeks away that marked a turning point in Earth's history. Everyone was too busy to notice the three walking back up to their flat in America.

"Put him on the couch," Barbara advised. Ian set the man down carefully.

"Who is he?" he asked.

Barbara shrugged her shoulders. "Some sort of…professor?" she guessed.

"He doesn't seem to be bleeding," Ian undid the man's bow tie and his shirt. Black bruises were forming but they weren't nearly as bad as they should have been. He groaned in his sleep and tried to roll over. Ian stopped him.

"Check his pulse," advised Barbara. Ian held the man's wrist and counted.

"There's…something odd…" he pushed harder, hoping the beat of blood through the man's veins would seem normal. "It's doubled. One-two-three-four, one-two-three-four…" Ian counted.

"That's…" Barbara checked for herself.

Neither of them said anything, they just waited for the man in the bow tie to wake up.

* * *

><p>The Doctor hated healing comas. They left him so dizzy. Dizzy was <em>not<em> cool. He opened his eyes, expecting to be on the side of the road or something. Not on a couch in an American flat in 1969. It could be worse. The Doctor sat up and buttoned his shirt, noting the bruises had for the most part faded. As he was adjusting his bow tie, the door opened. The Doctor sat down and pretended to be groggy…which he was, but he'd soon be over that.

He was totally unprepared for the two people who came to stand in front of him. Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright…though from the ring on her finger it was probably Barbara Chesterton by now. He could only stare blankly at them.

_Of course, it's 1969 and everyone would want to be in Florida to see the space launch even it means getting here obnoxiously early. It'll only have been what…four or five years since they stopped travelling with me? It's been so much longer for me. Four hundred years...and while I did see them at the end of my last life, I didn't exactly talk to them, I just looked…_

"Are you alright?" Ian asked, waving his hand in front of the Doctor's face.

"Fine!" the Doctor stood up, intent on getting out of there, before they could realize who he was, before they could ask any questions about the hows and whys, before he started involving them again. He'd nearly destroyed their lives once in his youthful naivete, he wasn't about to do it again. They'd done so much; they didn't need to do anymore. He walked right up to the door before he realized how much the room was spinning. Ian grabbed his shoulders as he fell and hauled him back to the couch, making him sit down with a cup of tea.

"Don't try to leave just yet," urged Barbara.

"She's right, lad, relax; you're perfectly safe here," Ian patted his shoulder.

"Right, sorry," the Doctor leaned back, intent on going back to sleep (or at least pretending to sleep). After a minute, someone draped a blanket over him, it must be Barbara—she always fussed over him.

"Who is he?" Barbara whispered to Ian.

"I don't know, but if the Doctor wants us to help him, we should. We owe it to him," Ian replied.

The Doctor picked that moment to pretend to wake up "Who's the Doctor?" he asked, blearily. It wasn't that he didn't know who he was, but he was curious. How did they see him after all this time?

"A dear friend of ours, we haven't seen him in a long while," answered Barbara.

"He's a temperamental old man who gets into the worst kind of mischief and used to drag us along with him. He seemed completely crazy at first until we got to know him," replied Ian.

The Doctor blinked. _If__ only__ they __knew__…_

"You should sleep; you were hit by a car," Barbara told him.

"So…why am I not in a hospital?" asked the Doctor. Ian looked at Barbara who nodded. Barbara handed him an open envelope with a card inside. The Doctor looked at it and then pulled out his own envelope with the number one on it.

"You have one too?" Ian exclaimed.

"Yes, no idea who sent it," replied the Doctor.

"We thought it was the Doctor," Barbara informed him.

"Really," the Doctor looked at the two envelopes. Amy, Rory and River had been 2 and 3 and number 4 remained to be seen. Someone had wanted Ian and Barbara here and here they were.

"Why are you here? I mean, it's obvious you're British and there's a monumental event happening in a few months, but why else?" the Doctor stood up slowly and paced.

"We won the lottery," Barbara told him.

The Doctor stopped pacing and froze. _That__'__s __my__ trick!_"Of course," he slapped his forehead and smoothed his hair back in the same movement.

"What is it?" Barbara asked, startled.

"It has to be me, only I could organize it. But why? Why would I do that?" the Doctor asked, looking to his former companions for answers. They stared back like he was crazy.

"Oh come on, Ian, Barbara, it's obvious! My future self sent these messages, risking crossing his own time stream in the process. He rounded up Amy, Rory, River and I…and then set it up so that you two would be here because I was going to be hit by that car no matter what," the Doctor looked at them.

"Who are you? How did you know our names?" Ian stood in front of his wife, protectively.

"There's so much I didn't tell you two," the Doctor smiled at them. "When I met you, I was five hundred years old; I'm nine hundred and nine now. You two were so young and concerned and…British. Susan adored you, of course," the Doctor told them and then stopped. He'd done it again.

"It can't be…it's not possible, you're too…" Barbara couldn't finish.

"Different? It's a funny little quirk of my species, when we're dying we can regenerate into a younger body; it usually changes everything right down to personality. It's quite complicated and I don't have the time," the Doctor moved to the door.

"I have to go, same advice as when Susan left: just move forward with your beliefs and prove to me how cool you are," the Doctor smiled and left.

"That isn't what he said-" objected Barbara.

* * *

><p>The Doctor ran away from the flat, away from his two friends, and out into the street. The black van was waiting for him.<p>

"Hello, Canton!" smiled the Doctor, knowing full well what was about to happen.

"Grab him," ordered the ex-FBI agent and the Doctor was caught.

_All according to plan._

* * *

><p><em>Should this be a two shot where the Doctor explains everything when he's 1103 and just did the whole nearly destroyed time bit? I won't do it unless you lot all yell at me to.<br>_


	2. Chapter 2

Okay, so the Tenth Doctor is about ten minutes away from regenerating and the Eleventh Doctor is about to go and hand the letters to the Teselector (and it is Teselector, the British accent downplays the use of the 'or' sound in words). Ian and Barbara are set according to what Sarah Jane Smith said at the end of SJA 4x06 so I'm not just making it up.

* * *

><p><span>The Fifth Envelope Part Two<span>

The radiation was slowly eating him from the inside; the Tenth Doctor…the dying Tenth Doctor had visited every past companion he could except for Rose…and the first two—the two that had started everything. He hadn't meant to, it was their fault anyway. They wandered onto the TARDIS just looking out for a wayward student. After that first trip that he forced them to go on…no, after two years of traveling with them, the Doctor had decided that he liked having someone to travel with him that didn't know anything. It was vain of him and it was dangerous. In every incarnation, there had always been a companion that he could explain things to and have them be so astonished at simple things like basic atmospheric excitation. There had been so many…so many companions to break the Doctor's hearts. They came to him like stray cats…and when they traveled with him for a while, they grew so much. They did amazing things…when they didn't die, get lost or tired of the endless string of deaths that followed him. He'd lost so many to the universe and yet there was always someone else to take their place.

It all started with them. Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright.

It was 2010 now, the Doctor walked slowly through the corridors of Cambridge University looking for two professors. He knew them instantly when he saw them…because they hadn't aged since he saw them leave on that Dalek time machine.

_How did that happen? What have I done to them? _

The Doctor edged closer to them, they were talking to a student about an assignment…something so trivially human and normal and…nice. Something the Doctor couldn't have, Time Lord Academy aside. He smiled and felt a painful twinge in his chest. He was running out of time; if he was going to see Rose before he regenerated, he'd have to go soon.

With one last look at them, the Doctor put the TARDIS on course for a point in Rose Tyler's time line before she ended up with the meta-crisis version of him in Pete's Universe.

* * *

><p>Ian and Barbara watched the tired looking man in the pinstripe suit walk away from them. They knew he'd been watching them; there'd been something familiar about him…especially his eyes. His eyes spoke of an ancient sadness the rest of his youthful features wouldn't admit to. Barbara thought back to 1969 when she'd met the Doctor that day in America months before man reached the moon. She looked at Ian—he'd seen it too.<p>

"He did say that he could change," he remembered.

"I know. But what happened to make him so sad?" she looked back. He was long gone now.

"Come on, Professor," teased Ian "you have a class to teach."

Barbara nodded and turned to see a _very _familiar face wearing tweed, looking very much like a university professor…but he was far too young.

"Doctor?" she asked.

"Hello, Barbara," he smiled.

"What happened?" demanded Ian "Last time we saw you, it was 1969 and…you haven't aged," he realized, breaking off from his original thought.

"Neither have you," countered the Doctor. "My younger self noticed that," he nodded his head in the direction that the pinstriped man had gone.

"That was you?" Barbara asked.

"Yes, I had to wait for him to leave; crossing my own time stream is very dangerous. I'm the lifetime that came after him. I was dying so he checked up on every single companion that I could…including you two. What could have happened? What have I done to you?" the Doctor pulled out a gold and silver rod which flashed green. He pointed it at them and checked the readings.

"Well?" Ian asked.

"There's nothing wrong with you, I promise. You're just getting a few extra decades out of life; you're not stuck here, not like I am. For me, it's been another two hundred years since 1969," the Doctor smiled and pulled out a group of envelopes.

"I haven't sent these yet. It's ending for me, you two. For real this time," the Doctor took a deep breath and suddenly he was that tired old man who scooped them right out of their lives. Suddenly, he looked just the right age to teach at Cambridge. Barbara hugged him. He looked like he needed it.

"Ah, a Barbara hug, I've missed those," the Doctor hugged her back and then hugged Ian.

"You've…gotten shorter."

"I did shrink a bit, yeah. My third, fourth and tenth selves were practically giants…" the Doctor laughed.

"But you're dying for good now? You can't just change again?" Barbara asked.

"I have to die. My death is fixed now; it can't be rewritten or avoided. I have to die…but before I do, I'm going to send these notes to my past self, River, Amy, Rory and Canton and your past selves and complete the paradox. You remember what happened; my nine hundred and nine year old self got hit by a station wagon-"

"And we were there…completely out of coincidence," Ian interrupted.

"It wasn't coincidence. I told you, I planned this. My finger prints were all over that set up to get you two in Florida. I needed you to be there, I know I need you to be there…and you were. Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey…it's complicated. I felt I owed you an explanation for what happened all those years ago," the Doctor explained.

"You won't stay for a while longer?" Barbara took his hand.

"I also wanted to apologize. I got you involved again and I shouldn't have. I should've kept my mouth shut and I didn't. 1965 should've been the last you ever heard of me. Then again, if you pay attention enough it's hard to miss me. Space ship crashing into Big Ben, another space ship causing people to nearly jump off roofs, space cruise liner nearly hitting London…I haven't exactly be discreet…" the Doctor laughed but there was no joy in it.

_And__ why__ should __there __be?_ Barbara thought. _He__'__s__ about __to__ die._

"Can't you run away?" she pleaded.

"I did run…for two hundred years. You're a history teacher, Professor Chesterton. Take another look at the books. My favourite is the Tower of London," he winked at her.

"You really can't do anything?" Ian asked.

"No," he shook his head. "If I rewrite a fixed point in time, time will be fatally wounded. I've been running my whole life, and now I've finally run out of places to run," he took their hands again.

"Good bye."

And then he left, walking back the way he had come. And all they could do was watch.

* * *

><p>You know, I might be able to get one more out of this one…how about it? I won't unless you tell me!<p> 


	3. Chapter 3

Part 3

Since I'm still getting the odd request for this bit a year or so later, I thought I might try. I was discouraged by some rather mean reviews to some of my other stories so I procrastinated…

Post Angels Take Manhattan…I cried during that episode.

* * *

><p>Barbara never thought she'd see the Doctor again after his good bye at Cambridge. He said he was going to die once and for all.<p>

_I guess even a time traveler has to die sometime. _

Barbara thought back to all the adventures she had had with the Doctor and Susan and Ian. She thought of how hurt he looked when they asked to leave the TARDIS. She'd never forgotten that tantrum. He'd been so selfish, dragging them along on his travels without wanting them there and then nearly refusing to let them leave. It was…hard to watch.

And then it was 1969 and a much younger looking, shorter, funnier Doctor had waltzed back into their lives while vacationing in America. The Doctor had aged another four hundred years but it didn't seem like it. Not until Barbara had looked at his eyes.

In 2010, he'd shown up again—twice in one day for them, twice in 200 plus years for him. He was supposed to have died after that.

So why was he sitting in New York, in a park by a picnic basket holding a piece of paper like it was his lifeline? Was this a younger version? Barbara had only come here for a special history exhibit at the Natural History Museum. Cambridge was sponsoring it so she got to travel to America for free. She never expected to run into him here. Surely there were more exciting places in time to travel to.

The Doctor pocketed the page and leaned back. Barbara couldn't decide whether he needed to be left alone or if he really needed a hug. She crossed over to him. He didn't notice her at first until she was right in front of him. He looked up. It was like he didn't recognize her at first…even though she still had not started aging.

"Barbara," he smiled slightly but it was forced like he didn't actually want to smile.

"Doctor," she smiled down at him. "What's wrong?"

He shook his head and stood up slowly—the way a tired old man stands up.

"Where are we, Barbara Chesterton?" he asked.

"Last time I saw you was when you were at Cambridge."

"I see. I told you I was dying," he chuckled. "Dodged that one."

"How? I thought you said…it was unavoidable," she remembered.

"That's what I thought…but an opportunity presented itself…and I took it. I have to wonder though…if I hadn't, would they have still…?" he trails off and shakes his head. "Can't think like that," he scolds himself and takes a deep breath.

"Doctor, is something wrong?" Barbara asked. The man looked exhausted.

"I just…hate endings."

"I know," she smiled. "When Ian and I left…"

The Doctor laughed like it was a pleasant memory. It was an honest laugh this time. "I brooded for a week. It was almost worse than when Susan left," he chuckled and then offered her his arm. She took it.

"How old are you now?" she asked as they started walking.

"Oh…Twelve hundred years? I'm starting to lose count."

Barbara could tell he was distracted…and that was putting it lightly. The Doctor seemed lifeless…maybe he didn't dodge his death after all and this specter was just an echo. Because that is how he looked to Barbara right at this moment.

"Am I bothering you?" she asked and the Doctor snapped to look at her.

"No," he said after a minute. "To quote a…friend…I shouldn't be alone."

"You don't have to say anything," Barbara took his hand and for a moment her Doctor, the old Doctor was holding her hand.

"You're about to cry," he observed.

"No…but you clearly want to," she countered. He froze again and almost let go of her hand but she didn't let him.

"You and Ian were right to leave…and I was right to stay away," he started, the rate of his breathing becoming more and more irregular. "I was upset…like a child was upset. And like a child I moved on…and on…and on. Now that I'm…older…" he trailed off again.

Barbara squeezed his hand and he squeezed back. "The universe is playing for higher stakes. All of the things I've seen and done and lost…and I can't leave well enough alone…ever. You left and I was good, I stayed away and you have led a normal, fantastic life with Ian. I got too selfish after you left. Started taking risks my first life never would have. I let it get so out of hand…one adventure too many and suddenly my friends, my companions either wanted to leave or were forced to or…" he tore his hand from hers and stopped walking.

"Why can't I ever learn?" he demanded in harsh voice but he wasn't angry at her…only at himself. "Why should anyone travel with me?"

Barbara took his shoulders and pulled him into a hug. For a moment he resisted and then he melted down.

"I don't regret those two years we spent traveling. I learned so much…I married the love of my life after we got back. Ian would go on and on about your temper but he never stopped smiling. I don't know what has happened to you recently, Doctor and I don't think you're able to tell me…but I know you and I know you did everything you could. You wouldn't be like this if you hadn't exhausted every option," she whispered to him and felt his breathing even out only slightly. She released him from the hug but didn't let go of him. "All those times our lives were in danger…it was worth the risk." She said and his eyes widened for a fraction of a second.

He smiled again—still fake and forced but better than the first one. "Barbara Wright. Always the teacher. Just when you think you can't learn anything else…" he kissed her hand. "Good bye."

Barbara let him go and the Doctor turned his back and still looking far older than his face would ever let on trudged away.

"You keep saying that…" she muttered to herself.


End file.
